Sambac Beneath Unlikely Skies

Heba Hayek

Tender yet brutal vignettes on a girlhood in Gaza, Palestine, filled with honey and warmth.

Winner of the Creative Award in the 2022 Palestine Book Awards.

Chosen as a 2021 Book of the Year by The White Review, Middle East Eye & The New Arab.

29 July 2021
Paperback / 9781914221026
ebook / 9781914221088
130 pages

Buy this book (paperback)

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‘Beautiful stories of growing up in Gaza.’
— The White Review

‘A tender, beautiful book.’
— The New Arab

‘A book I devoured in a single sitting.’
— Middle East Eye

Sambac Beneath Unlikely Skies is written for those who had to leave—collected remembrances of a childhood in Gaza by a woman far from Palestine’s sun and sea. Overindulgent, chaotic and sentimental, Heba Hayek’s narrator struggles to navigate life in colder, unfamiliar worlds. She holds tightly to memories of home, hoping they will lead back to her sisters and mothers.

With brilliance and grace, Hayek’s vignettes explore the methods of survival nurtured by Palestinian women in the face of colonial occupation and patriarchy—the power of community care, and of loving what’s not meant to be loved. Her reflections reveal the intimate magnificence and quiet devastation of everyday life: a family drive on the shore, waxing for the first time with aunties, or peeling figs while waiting at a checkpoint.

Heba Hayek is a London-based, Gaza-raised Palestinian author, creative and facilitator. She completed an MFA in Creative Writing at Miami University, Ohio, and studied for an MA in Social Anthropology at SOAS University of London.

Heba’s first book, Sambac Beneath Unlikely Skies, won the Creative Award in the 2022 Palestine Book Awards and was chosen as a 2021 Book of the Year by The White Review, Middle East Eye and The New Arab.

Listen along to the Sambac Beneath Unlikely Skies playlist, curated by Heba Hayek.

‘Hayek … is one of the most talented Palestinian writers writing in English today.’
— The Electronic Intifada

‘Unflinching in its raw honesty … will not disappoint.’
— The Markaz Review

‘Alight with humour and shared pain.’
— Words Without Borders

‘A fragmented girlhood to the present … cohere[s] in a poignant logic of exile.’
— Mondoweiss

‘A searing work of growing up in war-torn Palestine … a succour to such souls who have had similar experiences.’
— Feminism in India

‘About finding and making love and life through and within impossibility.’
— Full Stop

‘Delicate and powerful … This work will remain with you long after reading.’
— Rafeef Ziadah, poet, activist and co-editor of Revolutionary Feminisms

‘A genuine, bittersweet taste of Gaza. I dwelled on it like a child searching for familiarity and found godly comfort, tears and joy.’
— Meera Adnan, Palestinian fashion designer

‘Each character feels as familiar as kin, with Gaza as the effervescent, maligned and transcendent protagonist.’
— Zena Agha, author of Objects from April and May

‘An act of restoration and celebration. Heba’s light-footed, lyrical writing dazzles with its depth.’
— Rebecca Tamás, author of Strangers

‘Heba reaches for home through pastries named for little kisses, and I am torn apart.’
— Aisha Sabatini Sloan, author of Borealis

‘Heba’s writing radiates … in glittering prose that cuts through bone.’
— Akil Kumarasamy, author of Half Gods

‘A timeless expression of love and reckoning.’
— TaraShea Nesbit, author of Beheld

‘Tender and elegant … establishes [Hayek] as a critical new voice on gender, family and war.’
— Daisy Hernández, co-editor of Colonize This!

‘A beautiful and emotionally charged collection … Heba’s clarity effortlessly draws the reader into her world.’
— Yara Hawari, author of The Stone House

Press

In Palestine with Books

— Words Without Borders, 22 February 2024

REVIEW: Sambac searches for ‘home in exile’

— The Electronic Intifada, 23 June 2023

REVIEW: War as setting and protagonist

— Mondoweiss, 8 July 2022

MEMO announces Palestine Book Awards shortlist 2022

— Palestine Book Awards, 11 June 2022

REVIEW: In Search of a Home Disappearing

— Feminism in India, 8 March 2022

REVIEW: Sambac Beneath Unlikely Skies by Heba Hayek